SOLANA BEACH  Three recent lawsuits challenging Solana Beach’s newly adopted coastal land-use plan appear likely to move forward, regardless of what happens with an amendment that city officials have crafted to try to soften concerns that the plan will trample on private property rights.

The amendment is an effort to strike a compromise between blufftop homeowners and environmentalists over new rules that could limit sea walls and development along the city’s nearly two miles of coastline.

The City Council is expected to vote on the amendment May 22, City Manager David Ott said.

But there’s little hope the proposal will bridge the gap between frustrated property owners and supporters of the plan who say it will help protect public access to the beach and restore a more natural coastline.

A homeowners group calling itself the Beach & Bluff Conservancy sued the city April 26 challenging the coastal plan and seeking to invalidate the new regulations about sea walls and blufftop development. The same group sued the Coastal Commission last year over its role in shaping the plan.

Similar lawsuits were filed against Solana Beach last month by resident Joseph Steinberg and several condominium associations.

The proposed amendment would address a few rules that homeowners are unhappy with, but it completely ignores some of the biggest sticking points, said Jonathan Corn, a lawyer representing the conservancy and the condo associations.

Those points include a 20-year shelf life on sea wall permits, meaning when the permit expires, applicants would have to seek another — and meet several requirements to get it approved.

That uncertainty is stressful for homeowners and could adversely affect property values, said conservancy leader Chris Hamilton, who paid to build a sea wall behind his house about five years ago and helped organize the most recent lawsuit.

City officials won’t comment on the suits, Ott said.

The plan

The city has worked for 13 years trying to get the land-use plan approved, submitting several different versions to the Coastal Commission. Some earlier versions were rejected outright; others the city withdrew to make suggested revisions.

The commission approved a plan last year, but added 153 modifications, including restrictions on sea walls and private stairways to the beach.

Those revisions remain a point of contention. Officials with the Coastal Commission say they were simply recommendations that the city could decide to use or not.

However, since it’s ultimately up to the commission to approve the plans, some have argued that the suggestions amount to forcing changes and taking control from local jurisdictions.

In February, the City Council approved the plan that included the commission’s changes.

“The original (plan) that the city embraced and submitted to the Coastal Commission has basically been withering away against an onslaught of Coastal Commission changes over the past six or seven years,” Corn said.

Protecting property

The amendment makes small changes in the plan’s treatment of sea walls, but the underlying conflict remains.

The concrete barriers can cost homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars and are designed to minimize erosion that threatens houses, streets or other assets. However, they also can have adverse affects on surrounding beaches, since erosion is what helps replenish sand along the shore.

“After a decade or so of the sea wall being in place, the beach disappears,” said Diana Lilly, a coastal planner with the Coastal Commission’s San Diego office.

Although the Coastal Commission strongly discourages sea walls, it understands that they are needed in areas such as Solana Beach, where bluffs can erode abnormally quickly, Lilly said.

“We’re trying to keep the bluffs as natural as possible while trying to recognize that there is a need for property protection,” she said. “What we really don’t want to see is 80-foot-high sea walls all up and down Solana Beach.”

Under the coastal plan, homeowners with sea walls will have to pay separate fees to cover the costs associated with replacing sand and the loss of public beach space. These fees can cost homeowners tens of thousands of dollars, said Corn, the lawyer.

Jim Jaffee, a member of the Surfrider Foundation who has argued against the sea walls, said he thinks the cash involved with the fees is the bottom line for many of the homeowners involved with the lawsuit.

“Their real intention is to delay paying mitigation for these sea walls that they have in place,” he said. “The lawsuit is completely baseless.”

Private stairways

Private stairways are also a big topic for many of the roughly 900 condominium owners along the southern bluffs of the city. Again, the biggest problem is uncertainty, said Tom Ryan, president of the Condominium Owners Association of South Sierra Avenue, which represents the complexes.

The homeowners associations from eight of the nine complexes have also filed a lawsuit against the city, seeking to invalidate some of the new rules.

The proposed amendment calls for the stairways to be “phased out at the end of the economic life of the structures.” Ryan said he and other condo owners feel the language is too ambiguous.

Three of the condo complexes have private stairs to the beach that have been there for decades. Ryan said he’s afraid that the new rules could require those to be taken down or made public in the future. Even if that doesn’t happen, just having to tell prospective buyers that it’s possible could lower property values, he said.

“It seems like everything’s sort of stacked against you,” he said about the new regulations.

The amendment allows the private stairways to stay up as long as they’re “maintained in good condition” but not expanded or rebuilt. They could stand indefinitely, Lilly said.

Building and remodeling

Other debated regulations limit development along the bluffs, including major remodeling and expansion work. They are intended to eventually push development farther away from the edge of the bluffs.

Existing homes will be grandfathered in, but the owners would have to conform to the new regulations if they make any significant changes to their property.

Hamilton said he has a smaller house that he would like to remodel someday, but now he doesn’t think it will be practical since he would have to remove part of the house closest to the bluff.

The rules that would essentially make some of land unusable after rebuilding or remodeling are akin to taking away property without compensation, Corn said.

Hamilton said he doesn’t have much hope that the issues will be resolved.

“We don’t feel like it’s a negotiation because the things we say that are important to us, they have not put in there,” he said.

Even if a deal is struck that everybody can live with, it would still need to be approved by both the city and the California Coastal Commission, which could take years.